A lot of art-making is about constraints. These are generally imposed by the medium (What can I make with bits of dried colored goo on a rectangular surface?

A lot of art-making is about constraints. These are generally imposed by the medium (What can I make with bits of dried colored goo on a rectangular surface? Or with just a pencil and paper?) or by some arbitrary-but-effective rule set (e.g., the sonnet form in poetry, the fugue in music). Great art embraces and somehow transcends the constraints of the chosen form. Consider how great paintings, constrained as they are in their static, rectangular form, almost leap from the canvas into your eyes. They are magical because skill of the artist and the constraints exist and work together. The best computer art will work not because computers can be used to "create almost anything," but because the constraints inherent in computing (or some chosen set of constraints therein) stimulate artists to make great things inside those constraints. We do already have some good constraints we can choose to work within. I like text games, roguelikes, etc. because they stimulate my imagination more than immersive graphics do, and because such games have been a part of computing almost since the beginning[1]. As computers become ever more ubiquitous and powerful, we may have to apply our own constraints, and find which ones give rise to the most interesting art. [1] A great history is at https://if50.substack.com/ https://if50.substack.com/, frequently mentioned on HN